I beat him on my first try but it was a close thing. I used rogue stance and my back stabs kept clipping through the guy and hitting his weak spot in the front. The bugs he kept summoning gave me more trouble than the boss did.
The only reason I don't use it more is because I prefer small studio or indie titles. Other than that, I think its as good and in some ways better than steam.
While featured in numerous forms of storytelling across multiple mediums, the story of Faust doesn't have a literary background. He was mostly a folk story eventually written down much like Baba Yaga.